Arts Explora invited Bubble to facilitate a conversation about youth empowerment in the arts as part of Arts & Audiences Now! 2023.

Marie and Lauren, our Artistic Director and one of our practitioners, travelled to the very grand Monnaie de Paris to share their experience of youth arts and power in the sector and to explore the question How can we build life-long engagement with arts and culture for children and young people?

Around the table were senior leaders from European cultural institutions including museums and music organisations, most of whom were shortlisted for an award at the same event.

Marie posed questions and heard about the challenges organisations face and the change they hope to make.

We talked about how we can ensure that early experiences of arts and culture are positive and empowering, whose voices are currently central in organisations and how we can improve representation across the sector.

It was clear that youth voice is a hot topic across Europe with many of the organisations placing importance on opportunities for self-expression as well as skills development. There was palpable passion for increasing access to arts and culture for children and young people and widespread recognition of the positive impact that participation can have on wellbeing and future appreciation for the arts.

Questions were raised about youth advisory boards and how successful these are in practice.

To finish, we talked about what innovation looks like and how we want the sector to be for the next generation.

After this session we were given a guided tour of the Monnaie de Paris before being led along the Seine to the Institiut de France for the awards ceremony, champagne and canapes!

Fellow Brits Hospital Rooms were amongst the winners and we enjoyed chatting about their work on mental health wards.

It was a pleasure to meet likeminded organisations from the continent and encouraging to see the range of opportunities available to young people.

Of course it wasn’t all work, Marie and Lauren managed to take in the sights and flavours of Paris and can’t wait to go back next year!